Reflections

Through this blog, I myself have learnt a lot about my eating habits. The reason being, Usually, while I dont really pay atention to what I am eating, by analysing what I have eaten over the past three days, has allowed me to see other thingslike what kind of food, how it is made so on and so forth. Through this, I am able to see a certain pattern in what I eat. My eating habits are pretty good, howeer there are certain things I need to take note of. My calcium intake is very low and I need to increase that. My sodium intake is too high, I need to reduce that. Though, the fats in my food are within the recommended range, they are in the higher category, so it would be better to reduce that. However, since my inake of proteins, vitamins, fats and carbohydrates are in the recommended range, my eating habits are pretty good.

Yes, I do think my diet is a healthy one. This is because the diet provides me sufficient carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and fats. This is achived because the food I eat is made properly (e.g. minimal oil) and it is a balanced meal (my recommended healthy dish has 2 types of veetables). Therefore, I consider my diet a healthy one though there is always room for improvement (like i had mentioned before: increase calcium intake and reduce sodium intake).

I would say I only know all these because of the suggested nutritional tools. They are the most useful as they provide me with information about my diet, help me to analyse my diet, help me conclude about my eating habits and from there also give me advice on what i should do next. Especially the Food Intake Assessment, where i submited all the meals I had eaten over the three days, and a perfect analysis came out of the diet with also information on what they (sodium, calcium, fats, carbohydrates etc.) are, what I lack or I am consuming too much of, what the implications are, so what I should do and also clear visuals showing me the composition very vividly. This allows me to immediately recognise my 'errors' and use the advice given to change my diet for the bettter. The Healthy Diet Pyramid also was useful as it allowed me to see how balanced my diet was. Therfore, in total, the suggested nutritional tools were very useful.

I think my my suggested one-dish meal is healthy because the ingredients used are extremely healthy and the cooking method too is extremely healthy. Firslty, two types of vegetables ( beetroot and lady's fingers) are used as the main side dishes with minimal oil used and slices of onion. The sambar involves a very healthy ingredient dhaal, which is rich in protein, no oil used in this. The rasam also has one important ingredient, tamarind which helps in digestion. Both contain tomatoes, healthy spices (contribute to digestion, taste, aroma) and the sambar contains vegetables drumsticks. This increase the intake of vegetables once agian ( increase in fibre, proteins, vitamins). Curd is basically milk, so calcium is also involved. With all these nutrition present, i think my suggested one-dish meal is the most healthy with the replacement of rice with brown rice.